Multitasking on FPGA coprocessors

Abstract

Multitasking on an FPGA-based processor is one possibility to explore the efficacy of reconfigurable computing. Conventional computers and operating systems have demonstrated the many advantages of sharing computational hardware by several tasks over time. The ability to do run-time configuration and readback of FPGAs in a coprocessor architecture allows investigating the problems of implementing realistic multitasking. This paper explores the control software required to support task switching for an application split over the host processor – coprocessor boundary as well as the requirements and features of context saving and restoring in the FPGA coprocessor context. An FPGA coprocessor designed especially to support multitasking of such applications is described.